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We were deeply disappointed by your response to our report, Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid, and particularly your dismissal of it as “anti-Israeli propaganda” within hours of its release. The UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) invited us to undertake a fully researched scholarly study. Its principal purpose was to ascertain whether Israeli policies and practices imposed on the Palestinian people fall within the scope of the international-law definition of apartheid. We did our best to conduct the study with the care and rigor that is morally incumbent in such an important undertaking, and of course we welcome constructive criticism of the report’s method or analysis (which we also sought from several eminent scholars before its release). So far we have not received any information identifying the flaws you have found in the report or how it may have failed to comply with scholarly standards of rigor.2

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Instead, you have felt free to castigate the UN for commissioning the report and us for authoring it. You have launched defamatory attacks on all involved, designed to discredit and malign the messengers rather than clarify your criticisms of the message. Ad hominem attacks are usually the tactics of those so seized with political fervor as to abhor rational discussion. We suppose that you would not normally wish to give this impression of yourself and your staff, or to represent US diplomacy in such a light to the world. Yet your statements about our study, as reported in the media, certainly give this impression.3

We were especially troubled by the pressure your office exerted on the UN secretary-general, António Guterres.

We were especially troubled by the extraordinary pressure your office exerted on the UN secretary general, António Guterres, apparently inducing him first to order the report’s removal from the ESCWA website and then to accept the resignation of ESCWA’s distinguished and highly respected executive secretary, Rima Khalaf, which she submitted on principle rather than repudiate a report that she believed fulfilled scholarly standards, upheld the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law, and produced findings and recommendations vital for UN proceedings.4

Instead of using this global forum to call for the critical debate about the report, you used the weight of your office to quash it. These strident denunciations convey a strong appearance of upholding an uncritical posture by the US government toward Israel, automatically and unconditionally sheltering Israel’s government from any criticism at the UN, whether deserved or not, from the perspective of international law. Such a posture diminishes the US’s reputation as a nation that upholds the values of truth, freedom, law, and justice, and that serves the world community as a regional and global leader. It also shifts the conversation away from crucial substantive concerns.5

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You fail to consider that Israeli leaders have themselves warned of the apartheid features of their policies.

It may have been that the word “apartheid” alone was enough to trigger your response, a reaction undoubtedly abetted by Israel’s instantaneous denunciation of our report. In following Israel’s public lead, however, you fail to consider that Israeli leaders have themselves grasped and warned of the apartheid features of their policies for decades. The widely admired Yitzhak Rabin, twice Israel’s prime minister, once confided to a TV journalist, “I don’t think it’s possible to contain over a long term, if we don’t want to get to apartheid, a million and a half [more] Arabs inside a Jewish state.” Prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak both warned publicly that Israel was at risk of becoming an apartheid state and cautioned their constituencies about what would happen to Israel if the Palestinians realized this and launched an anti-apartheid struggle. Former Israeli attorney general Michael Ben-Yair has stated flatly, “we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories.” These prominent Israelis were clear-headed observers of their own country’s policies as well as patriots, and it was their cautions, as much as any other source, that inspired ESCWA member states to consider that the possibility of an apartheid regime existing in this setting must be taken seriously and so commissioned the report now under attack.6

It is therefore wholly inappropriate and wrong for you to charge that, simply by accepting this commission, we as authors were motivated by anti-Semitism. The reverse is true. To clarify this claim, we call your attention to two features of the report that we hope will lead you to reconsider your response.7

It is wrong for you to charge that, simply by accepting this commission, we were motivated by anti-Semitism.

Firstly, the report carefully confines its working definition of apartheid to those provided in the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the International Crime of Apartheid and the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It does not rely on definitions developed in polemics about the conflict or taken casually from online sources. As the 1973 Convention and the Rome Statute are part of the same body of law that protects Jews, as well as all people in the world, from discrimination, this authoritative definition should not be set aside. Any responsible critique must therefore engage with these legal definitions, and the larger body of international human-rights jurisprudence in which they are situated, so as to address the report for what it actually says rather than concocting a straw man that can be easily dismissed. We hope you will reconsider the report in this light.8

Secondly, the member states of ESCWA requested that a study be commissioned to examine whether Israel’s apartheid policies encompassed the Palestinian people as a whole. This meant that, as authors, we were asked to consider Palestinians living in four geographic regions within four legal categories or “domains”: those living in the occupied territories, those resident in Jerusalem, those living as citizens within Israel, and those living in refugee camps or involuntary exile. For each domain, we found that Israeli policies and practices are, by law, internally discriminatory. But more importantly, we found that all four operate as one comprehensive system that is designed to dominate and oppress Palestinians in order to preserve Israel as a Jewish state. It is this whole system of domination, too long misinterpreted by treating Palestinians as situated in unrelated categories, that generates the regime of domination that conforms to the definition of apartheid in international law. Moreover, it is this system that has undermined, and will continue to undermine, the two-state solution to which the United States has committed its diplomatic prestige over the course of several prior presidencies. Appraising the viability of this diplomatic posture in light of findings in this report would, we propose, be crucial for the credibility of US foreign policy and should not be blocked by political considerations.9

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Finally, we find it deeply troubling that your objections to our report have extended to criticism of the UN itself, partly on grounds that the UN devotes excessive attention to the question of Palestine. For one thing, this reasoning rests on a “false fact”: The UN, and ESCWA, engages with a vast range of issues, with Israel constituting only a small fraction of the whole. For another, denying that the UN has a special role here ignores the unique responsibility of the UN in relation to this conflict. Immediately after World War II, a war-weary Britain, then the Mandatory authority in Palestine as a result of arrangements following World War I, turned over the future of Palestine to the UN for resolution. The UN was therefore, from the outset of its existence, given a responsibility for finding a solution to the conflict in Palestine. This was unlike any comparable responsibility the UN possesses anywhere else in the world. Seven decades of human suffering and insecurity have resulted from the UN’s failure to discharge this obligation—not because it has paid too much attention to Israel but because it was not able to bring its influence sufficiently to bear so as to produce a sustainable and just peace. For observers able to view the conflict with impartiality, it has become clear that what has happened in Palestine can only be resolved when the rights and security of both Israelis and Palestinians are taken into account. The UN continues to have a vital role in that mission, and it is crucial that its member states, including the United States, endorse this role and do its best to enhance its effectiveness.10

We hoped our report would give rise to discussion of all these issues. Especially, we hope that its findings will inspire a review of this question by authoritative legal bodies such as the International Court of Justice. We did not seek a shouting match. We therefore now respectfully ask, against this background, that our report be read in the spirit in which it was written, aiming for the safety, security, and peace of everyone who lives in territory currently under Israel’s control. As the report’s authors, this was our moral framework all along, and we still retain the hope that the serious questions at stake will not be buried beneath an avalanche of diversionary abuse of our motives and character. Charges of crimes against humanity should not be swept to one side out of deference to political bonds that tie the United States and Israel closely together, or for reasons of political expediency. Such machinations can only weaken international law and endanger us all.11

Sincerely,12

Richard Falk,
Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University14

Richard FalkRichard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University, is the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories and a member of the Nation editorial board. He is the author of many books, including Chaos and Counterrevolution: After the Arab Spring.

Virginia TilleyVirginia Tilley, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, is the author of The One-State Solution and Beyond Occupation.

Nimrata has tried so hard, for so long, to fit into South Carolina politics that she's obviously dulled her edge, if she ever had one.

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Brigitte Meiersays:

April 27, 2017 at 12:16 am

The report sounds like it was the best that can be made. I have full confidence in its authors, they are very rational, intelligent authors and far away from any anti-Semitism or political partisanship.

Unfortunately, Nikki Haley lacks that professional integrity and competence. Just when we thought it couldn't get worse with the dilettante and often unprofessional ways of former ambassador Samantha Powers, Nick Haley demonstrates these same shortcomings in even larger extreme.

While she obviously has to transmit the message of the president, there are ways in which to do that intelligently but Nikki Haley lacks that capacity.

It isn't against the president to acknowledge the undue restrictions and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians by the Israeli government and it in no way anti-Semitic to call the obvious Apartheid state that Israel has become with respect to any non-Jewish person in Israel and Palestine by its true name: Apartheid state.

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Geoffrey Dalysays:

April 26, 2017 at 3:21 pm

The Nation's report addresses the points the UN requested and is a factual and fair report, no doubt peer reviewed before submittal to the UN.
One aspect of the request for fairness from the US Ambassador would be to point out that throughout history countries have been visited and occupied by other nationalities and subjugated the the indigenous populations to a whole new set of rules on where and how they live in the now occupied country.
Just like the US Government after the Europeans spread out across the continental US. They then corralled all the Native American Indians and herded them onto waste lands which then were found to have valuable assets on/under these "supposed waste land" and nearly 300 years later are still subjected to the powers of the oil/gas, mining, big Industry in losing their lands backed by the US Government despite the 1850's and 1860' Fort Laramie Treaties recognizing Sovereignty of the tribal nations and their lands .
The same has occurred with the Palestinian people; when Great Britain after WWII, repatriated all the Jewish war refugees into the area then called Palestine. Not preparing anyone beforehand through diplomatic negotiations, due to ignorance of the land and religious differences, with Jerusalem in the center [the city should be a non disputed city and shared by all religious denominations throughout the world]
No one is prepared to sit down and really work out a fair and humane occupation of the whole area, needs independent dedicated diplomatic politicians to spend time with both sides [not just two or three days] and no other nations involved. Then present to the UN a fixed and final agreement, otherwise there will be no end of arguments, disputes and fighting, with no winner or peace.
Resulting in a continued lose to both sides for a better life all around.
People can agree to disagree on life but there is and always been a middle road that can be accepted for coexistence of two tribes that has thousands of years of mutual history and living together. Not just in the Palestine area as originally known and encompassed a slightly larger area than today.
People need to look beyond history and forward for their children and their children's children.

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Charles Normansays:

April 26, 2017 at 1:53 pm

I have two observations and two related questions about the report, both of which i think reasonable and which i shall express in a civil and respectful manner. I do not say that past or current Israeli policies are or have been entirely correct or commendable in either a moral or legal sense; nor do I regard criticisms of Israel as per se antisemitic. Nevertheless, I offer these for your consideration:

1. The Executive Summary of the report states that the authors examined several counter-arguments, including that "Israeli treatment of the Palestinians... is a temporary state of affairs imposed on Israel by the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements"; but it concludes that none of those arguments, including that one, "stands up to examination." I would like to ask if, and how, the Report takes into account the constant and unrelenting terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, which are quite deliberately aimed at innocents including noncombatant women and small children; and also the fact that those attacks are explicitly justified and called for in public charters and documents from Palestinian "liberation" organizations.

2. It is to be acknowledged, as I already have, that criticism of the state of Israel ought not be regarded as antisemitic; but it has been observed that holding Israel to standards required of no other nation, and particularly of no other nation in the Mideast, might reasonably be so regarded. With that standard in mind, I would like to ask what investigative actions the United Nations has undertaken in regard to racial and religious discrimination in other nations in the region. Yes, the UN was uniquely involved in the creation of Israel as an independent nation; but does that truly justify the intense, even obsessive, focus on Israel demonstrated by the UN and its wholesale inaction and silence on the plain atrocities and injustices routinely practiced by its neighbors?

This question isn't a matter or personal bias on my part: it's based on well-established objective facts. No less an authority than UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, in an interview on December 16, 2016, said that the UN has issued a "disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel." Is that a valid observation? The record appears to bear it out: In the previous decade, the UN has issued 223 resolutions condemning Israel, while the number of condemnations of the Syrian regime -- as it murdered its civilian citizens wholesale -- stood at eight (8).

Can you explain what moral or legal authority the Report can reasonably claim, in the light of the UN's all-but-total focus on and condemnation of Israel's actions and policies, which remain unacknowledged efforts to protect its citizens and, in fact, survive as a nation -- alongside the UN's deafening, though routine, silence and tacit acceptance of the gross injustices and even murderous brutalities on the part of its neighbors and sworn enemies?

Thank you for your time. I respectfully await your reply. Let's see if you can respond to these observations and questions with the same reasoned and constructive comments that you expectex from your other critics.

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Peter Unterwegersays:

May 1, 2017 at 9:41 pm

Your two questions are the of the sort Israel's defenders typically pose. Terrorism as you should know is in the eyes of the beholder, and what Israel inflicts on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza on a regular basis is nothing short of state terrorism. On the other hand, Palestinians have a right to resist Israel"s occupation of their land which has endured since 1948 and was initiated by massacre, and rape. Two of the principal commanders of this policy later became Israeli prime-ministers (Begin and Shamir). Moreover, it was the Zionists, led by these figures that introduced terrorism against Palestinians and the British even before WWII. Regarding your second question, neither Assad, nor Saddam Hussein, nor al-Sisi or any of the other authoritarian rulers in the region pretend to lead democracies - but Israel, which established itself by the means described above, and continues its policies of expansion and oppression to this day constantly lays claim to the democratic mantle, when in reality democracy only exist for Jews while the Arabs under their control have suffer oppression for decades. No need to expose dictators -
the whole world knows about them already - but let us by all means expose the wolves that hide in sheep's clothing.

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Brigitte Meiersays:

April 27, 2017 at 12:23 am

This is the usual Jewish whine and denial and trying to paint Israel as the victim of Palestinian acts of terrorism all the while completely ignoring that the IDF shoots Palestinians and even children in Palestine for no cause other than that they exist.

Just today I read the report that Israel is spraying herbicides inside Palestine to destroy the crops of the Palestinians. And that is not an act of terrorism to destroy the food of the Palestinians?

Go figure. You want to see everybody as anti- Jewish but everybody will in time hate the Jews if they continue to constantly whine about how they suffer so much with the Palestinians whose land they stole and continue to steal, next to them. If the world was a fair place, the Palestinians would have the same right to have an army and weapons as Israel so they can fight a fair battle. Maybe once the Israelis have to suffer what the Palestinians have suffered in the many wars imposed upon them by the Israelis they would also see Israel as a horror regime. Just think about the IDF blowing up houses with the inhabitants still in them! What monsters are you and don't want to look at your own actions?

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Alicia Petersonsays:

April 27, 2017 at 9:48 am

While I agree that the Palestinians need more sovereignty and all that goes along with it and as the authors point out, kneejerk accusations of anti-Semitism are dangerous. However, your words highlight the need for a more nuanced understanding. You say this is the usual Jewish whine, and equate the world hating Jews to being critical of Israel. You do a disservice to the issue, to Israel, Jewish people and Palestine to lump everything together and see bad actions as representative of the entire Jewry. This is about the Palestinian voice not about characterizing the Jewish voice as whiny and undeserving. These are important conversations. I am not trying to quell your voice. I just want the understanding and nuance that the issue deserves.

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Charles Normansays:

May 1, 2017 at 10:38 am

Thank you. I stand by my respectful and fact-based observations and questions, and I note for the record that no response to either has been posted here -- only insults and namecalling. That is, of course, a revealing response in itself.

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Alicia Petersonsays:

April 25, 2017 at 4:30 pm

I would not expect this administration to honestly and openly read anything, let alone something critical of Israel and her policies. This is a very dangerous place to be. Kneejerk responses ad hominen attacks with subsequent censorship are becoming the norm and we must not let them be the norm. I am glad for your letter here. We need to be able to talk about difficult subjects and it would be nice if the administration could play a part in these conversations. Nicki Haley represents right wing talking points but no substance. She duckspeaks for what we do not know, but the result is a chilling effect on free speech and it it very dangerous.